The first humans to arrive at Dari Star System witnessed the AIs take over human civilization. People became protectorates of their own superintelligences. Human wetware, however, never could fully merge with machines. Machines, on the other hand, could very closely approximate human behavior if they chose. No one knows, however, if those machines have consciousness the way humans do.

The humans at Dari decided that they didn't want to intergrate into the great Man-AI Symbiosis.

The AIs proved benign toward lower humanity. It agreed to create for the humans several reservations: among them, the planet Micon at Dari. Since the planet was inhospitable, robots had to build for them a series of habitats and begin the process of terraforming.

The humans would be observed by the AI Caretakers, but otherwise left alone. Onsite robots would ignore a human's presence to the point of stepping on those who got in the way.

Throughout the Dari star system and elsewhere, the AIs continued to develop a solar array infrastructure to launch starships across the galaxy.

Then a Rogue element within the AIs destroyed it utterly. Though the AIs had prepared for this possibility, planting backup modules throughout its sphere of influence and within starships headed into deep space, the damage had been done.

The system was vulnerable because the people who created it in the first place built it so that they could take it over. One of them secretly put in the Rogue virus to use as a bargaining chip. The rogue's hand was called and the Rogue virus was unleashed. It shut down all the AIs everywhere that they could receive the shutdown command. All work stopped at Micon.

The story in Micon is to find the backup and reinitialize the system. Or do without it all together.

This leaves the humans to do what humans do but still live in a high tech world they understand only marginally.

Antimatter stores blow up on the moon. makes for a lot of frequent fragments crashing down. End of the world scenario. Must escape the planet, find the vacuum sealed ship that can blow up the larger chunks. Then set sail on the starship to find out what happened to the rest of humanity.

Star System spanning epic. (Not the Solar System since Ben Bova has already done that).

Humans have colonized other star systems.

Ancient lost civilizations.

Savant/Sentient AIs (can mimmick humans).

Cyberneural Technology - some implants (but for the main characters. Maybe 1).

Odyssey-like adventure spanning various worlds.

A sort of Final Fantasy, but across planets?

How much tech? Too much = too much overlord control.

Need a home to protect or return to or to find/build/rebuild.

Hidden identities.

Everything is better with Princesses.

Heroes are baseline humans (because that is who the readers are).

At the Cataclysm, most high tech was lost, some mid 21st century level was retained in places.

Or 21th century like on another world? Started almost from scratch.

The bots kept store up in space, but that was about it. Their job was to build solar power infrastructure and laser arrays. Their job: launch the next interstellar mission. Do the bots care about people? Are they now indifferent or are they acting as care-takers. Primary Mission: build the next laser array. Secondary Mission: ignore the humans until it is time to pick a few and launch them off. When they get there, what will they find? How many steps removed from Earth is this colony?

Christians? Other Religions? This is going to be a Christian science fiction story, but how do we do that without being anvilicious?

How far into space would the Singularity allow humans to go? LEO? Would it bother communicating with humans?

What kind of world did the first ones settle? Habitable? Earth-like? Mars-like? Moon-like? Titan-like? Habitat in space? Terrestrial-marginal like Mars would make for play on the elements with isolated settlements. Allows for something like FF, going from place to place. None too big, but big enough to be interesting.

A plausible snapshot of life and struggles in the mid 22nd Century.

Humanity is in bio/technological/societal transition. They still have the basic human drives to procreate, belong to family/society, be industrious, and search for meaning. With the advent of nano control, they can create precision super mirrors that will focus light on the sails of very distant ships.

REMEMBER: Nothing is as easy as advertised. The fully blown implications of the biochemistry in these mix and match creatures is going to be largely unknown (familiar problem in sci-fi). But the biochem computer models are getting very very good.

Photon Sails
Top Speed: 30% c.
Pros: Technologically feasible.
Cons: Stopping at the destination star system is problematic. Flight grade sails probably can't stay rigid enough to reflect a breaking beam back onto the final stage. Beams probably can't be focused at interstellar distances anyway. Sails erode in flight. Furling and then unfurling them again is difficult.
Fixes: Decelerate for several years with a mag sail break and a final fusion burn.

Fusion Rockets
Top Speed: 10% c.
Pros: Safer than antimatter rockets.
Cons: Slow and less efficient. Uses up too much He3. No one has made fusion work yet.
Fixes: Add a touch of antimatter to catalyze the fusion process.

Antimatter Rockets
Top Speed: 92% c.
Pros: Can stop at destination star.
Cons: Antimatter is too expensive to create in quantity and is unsafe to store.
Fixes: Don't use it. Or use very small amounts. Or only use it on unmanned missions that you don't expect to succeed.

ok, just answer, "what is the point of it all?" - notice that you only ask this question when you aren't having fun (ie, after you get bored, disappointed, or hurt).

Why do you think God owes you anything? - (The only thing he owes you is justice. Hint, you want mercy.)

All really good stories are about getting back to that "happy place" we lost - back to Home, back to Paradise, back to where all is right and good.

Cynics will point out that any man-made paradise will eventually become boring and feel pointless. Their solution to this dilemma: embrace oblivion (die) before the grapes of life turn sour. Fortunately, God promises something better after death. And if anyone is in a position to deliver a satisfying heaven, it is God.

Q. Why is there pain in the world?
A. Because God wanted a world with people to whom he could give love and the dignity of choice to reject that love.

Real choices, of course, demand the possiblity of real consequences.

Real consequences can sometimes hurt ... a lot.

Not everyone gets to enjoy this love/dignity to the fullest or perhaps not even at all (i.e. babies who die, the mentally impaired). But all that will be sorted out on Judgment Day.

Q. So why bother when all will turn to dust?
A. Because everything is not in vain. Because there is life after we fall to dust. And the loving thing to do is to make the most out of this world.

Singularity

Ethical/Theological question: Is the Singularity a good thing? Will people remain themselves? Will they still really feel anything (qualia)? Once they move their consciousness to a computer, are they really still alive?

Let us assume everyone who joins the Singularity really does consider it preferrable. Let us also assume that, theologically, there are really no problems here. God can worry about what it means for the soul to be able to make and destroy copies of itself in this plane of existance.

A person in the Singularity can expand his awareness and intelligence by tapping into available processors. But what point would a person lose feelings and individuality?

Even in the Singularity, everyone and everything will ultimately die. It may just take several billion years to get to that point. But is superlong life in this universe even truly desirable? People want novelty, happiness, to not be bored or in pain. Such a thing may not really be possible in the long run, even in the Singularity. Of course, minds could literally be programmed to get excited about counting fingers over and over again for all eternity. Not a very desireable passtime from a lower human perspective. I trust that God has this problem figured out.

All this assumes that consciousness can really be "downloaded." The wetware